Spotlight on Chip Litherland

TID:

Chip, it's great to have your image featured here. Please tell us about it's context.

CHIP:

Thanks for having me, Ross...love The Image, Deconstructed. Great information from some really amazing photographers.I used to carry a scanner in my car way back in the day and was a major spot news hound. I would chase anything and everything. As I learned quickly, spot news is mostly hurry-up, get told no, and then stand around for two hours. Most useful photos are made within the first few minutes of arriving, the rest is spent trying to get a PIO to give you some semblance of information about what you are shooting.

I was having lunch, when I starting noticing plumes of dark smoke rise along the highway from outside the window of my home-away-from home, Chick-fil-A. Knowing my community and all its back roads came in handy, as I sped out east to see what was going on. A few calls to the newsroom confirmed it wasn't a prescribed burn, which most of the time it is, so I knew there was a big blank rectangle somewhere in the newspaper for a photo. I was there before roadblocks (photo-blocks) were put up, so I was literally able to drive right into the blaze, which was swallowing up trees and brush alongside my car and threatening a subdivision of homes nestled right in the middle of it.

I knew I was in the right place when just in front of the wall of smoke and fire, I saw two women in shadow running along the fence line in their backyard - one in bright blue. The other in bright green. The photo gods threw me a bone for leaving my lunch behind.

TID:

Ok, now onto the image. Can you describe what was going on in your mind as the image took shape, and then also what you were thinking when you made the image.

CHIP:

I believe it was Melissa Lyttle who told me once that she thought I carried Mennonites in my trunk for when I needed a person in a photo. I didn't have any of them (this time), but I knew there was potential for a photo once I saw the splashes of color against the darkening background. I'm a color addict, so once I see it and want to use it, I tend to just concentrate on that aspect.

I had been shooting for at least an hour before this, so I knew I had plenty of your standard flame-on-tree, helicopter-with-bucket, fireman-pointing-at-fire photos. I don't want to reduce a scary event like a fire to a joke, but when you cover so many, they become one in the same. That's true for a lot of gigs at the newspaper. My goal every time I was sent out to make photos was to come back with something that I liked to look at, and perhaps runnable.

Literally that is it. When I am in a situation that I know is unique, I tend to just blank out and concentrate on color, light, and composition. Reducing the photo to these essential elements for me is what works. If a good moment slips in there, then sweet, but moreover I'm more concerned with setting the stage and letting life do what it may.

In the end, I just shadowed her for as long as I could, making all sorts of wide frames of Joyce watching the fire swallow up the forest behind her house. After while, the backyard became a very dark, Burton-esque landscape with a splash of green floating in-and-out of my frame. When the wind would gust, her dress would catch it, so I just moved into a spot where no trees would intersect with her body language, letting her breathe a bit. I was standing on a cinder block so I was able to get just high enough to keep the separation there. I'm extremely anal about my compositions: a place for everything and everything in its place.

TID:

You mentioned in a previous email about how you thought this imagerepresented for you the thought of "not abandoning your vision, even at spot news." What does this mean for you?

CHIP:

I don't ever want to just purely document. I want to see and destroy. Even at spot news. Nothing good can come of making the same photo every time. I've seen so many accidents, so many fires, so much sadness that I have to zone myself out and make it purely compositional to come up with something different. That just doesn't apply to spot news, but in everything we cover as photojournalists. It's not about winning a contest or the proverbial pat-on-the-back from The Man. It's about making images that satisfy myself visually first and foremost. I don't ever want to shoot like someone else, because I am not. It's the one thing each of us has in this field is an eye. A vision. A way we see things. It's more important than a splashy business card or that random new piece of gear I could care less about. In the end, it is all about the rectangles.

The people in the photo matter. They are someone else's loved one. I try to respect that by at least making a photo that make readers want find out more and perhaps help and/or learn from it. The only way to do that is to sucker them into reading eight inches of text with some eye candy.

Most spot news contest winners tend to be really awfully composed. They are great moments, but composed as if my toddler shot it. It is getting worse with the iPhone stuff out there (no, not Hipstamatic - relax). I'm talking about "user generated content." Everyone has a camera with them. Everyone. Newspapers will run it. They'll take it, not pay for it, and run it. What the millions of people have that you don't is reach. What we have that they don't? Eyes. Well, physically most of them have eyes. They don't have vision, they don't have a point-of-view, they don't have that squishy pink thingyou have in your skull. That is uniquely yours. Use it. It really is the only way to survive.

TID:

What were some problems or challenges you encountered during the coverage of this event, and how did you handle them?

CHIP:

The only challenge I had was physical. I had to figure out how to trespass in order to get permission to trespass. That's harder than it sounds. When I saw the Sauder sisters, they were a football field away from me. I had to get the courage to bury my head, act like I belonged where I was, and head straight into their backyard to see if I could hang with them as the fire approached their house.

Luckily, they were fine and were as transfixed by the Sleepy Hallow-ness of the scene as I was. They were taking photos themselves even as the fire ripped through their backyard, so I knew they understood why I materialized there. I still asked. Always ask.

In general, most people shoot first and beg for forgiveness if they do something wrong. I usually just try to be a human, know where the limits of what I can/can't do and work around them. In this instance, I had to break a rule in order to make a photo. Worth it? I don't know, but it looked sweet on A1, and I didn't have to be a jerk in order to make it.

I came back a few days later and dropped off a print - she came out in a another dress. It was grey. We joked about how the green dress worked better.

TID:

I'd like to hear your thoughts also about how you approach much of your work. I have always been impressed by your use of color and composition. With that, can you lend us some insight into how you make images?

CHIP:

I approach my work as if I don't have anyone hiring me to do it. I didn't always work that way, but I am now. I don't want to even press the shutter if it doesn't fit what I've developed as my vision. Sometimes I have to, and it's sickening. I break down a scene before I even start shooting. I look around and find that one element that will make or break a photo. It might be some random person's red shirt or a tiny patch of window light hitting someone. I try to find that key element (i.e. green dress) and abuse it. I'll bypass what could be really wonderful moments at some point to get to a wall or pocket of light where something may or may not happen. If I'm wandering for a feature or street shooting, I scribble down intersections, times of day, etc., so I know when to come back and stalk.

Color is king over anything else in my work. Following closely by composition. Then light. Then moment. This is just me, but a moment is worthless if its surrounded by sloppy composition and light.

The advice I have for anyone out there struggling to find themselves and develop that vision they can call their own is to really stop and think before shooting. It doesn't matter if you are at breaking news event, sports, or even a meeting at city hall. Seriously, just stop. Then think. In the end, you might make less photos, but it should be about making The Photo. Thinking about everything you are including is way more important that including everything.

The world would be a much better place if everything was painted a different primary color. I just wanted to say that.

++++++

Chip Litherland is a self-diagnosed color addict. Pretty much sums it up. He is also an award-winning photographer based in Sarasota, Florida, with over a decade of experience working in photojournalism. He is a contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, St. Petersburg Times, TIME, and ESPN the Magazine. His work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Southern Short Course, and the National Press Photographer’s Association. Chip is married to his lovely wife, Elaine, and they have two beautiful daughters together. He is on a 12-step-program to break the cycle of addiction to random gratuitousness, filling rectangles with extremely anal compositions, and sick perversion to oversaturated color. Apparently, he also rants on his blog from time-to-time with a wide range of topics from the evils of Hisptamatic to the death and/or rebirth of photojournalism - depending on the day.

2 comments:

The photos look like scenes from a dream, yet journalistic at the same time. Love his optimism on spot news and photojournalism. I tend to think "I phone Andy or Annie" is taking over breaking news and for free. he gives me a little faith!!